**It's hard to believe that January is almost over! The students have had a very productive week. Science inquiry experiments on water and starting the BUSY READER CLUB have been the talk of the classroom. I do believe that one male teacher is starting a hair styling trend that appears to interest some of my students!!!! The weather continues to be unpredictable so please keep snow pants and boots as part of the dress for the next week.
**Information on our BUSY READER CLUB is in your child's homework folder along with their book. Read over the information. any questions---email me.
**Our Book Buddies will be coming on Friday, January 30th to complete their favorite things movie trailers with their little buddies. Fun! Fun!
**Please confirm your Parent Conference date and time. I will be contacting those of you who need to reschedule this week. Parent/Teacher Conferences are Monday, February 9th, Tuesday, February 10th and Wednesday, February 11th. On Thursday and Friday (February 12th and 13th) school will be session in the MORNING ONLY. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. Hephzibah, bus and Magical Minds pick up will be at 11:00 am.
**Keep working on your 100th Day-100 Item Project! It is due on February 4th. We have some eager students who have already brought them in! They will be up in our hallways to view.
**Our 100th Day of School is fast approaching! We now have 6 volunteers! Thanks to B. Howell, L. Wojcik, L. Makonnen, C. Cummings, K. Meier and C. Goldbeck for volunteering. We still need 2-3 more volunteers for easy facilitation. Think about it! Our 100th Day Celebration will be held on Thursday, February 5th from 12:30-2:55 pm. We will also have an early Valentine's Day Party too. Don't forget to send a Valentine for each student on February 5th. There are 19 students. Students may also bring a treat to share. It can be a treasure (non food) or small nut free item that will go into a treat bag for home.
**Hearing Screening for Kindergarten students will be held on Friday, February 6th in the morning.
**A Cultural Event will take place in our classroom on Tuesday, January 27th fro 10:25-11:10 am. Japanese Exchange students attending Oak Park High will visit our classroom and give a presentation on Japan.
**Route to Reading Rotation 5 will begin on Tuesday, January 27th. You will receive notification of the skill your child will be working on at that time.
**The FUN FAIR is COMING! The FUN FAIR is COMING! The Irving School Fun Fair is Saturday, February 21st from 11-3 pm throughout the school. There will be games, prizes, silent auction, dancing for desserts and much more. Look for information soon from our Room Parents on making a contribution to our class WINTER theme basket. It will be a great day! Come play a game with me and bid on some silent auction events sponsored by ME!
**We are excited to have Atessa's dad, Chris come to speak to our class on all things "BONEY," on Monday, February 2nd at 9:30 am. Skeletons, x-rays and the like will be part of the fun. Reminder--if you would like to come and speak to our class on a particular subject, tradition, career, anything......email me to set up a time. The students really enjoy having their mom or day come to class and share!
**FUTURE AUTHOR VISIT--Author Aaron Reynold's of "Creepy Carrots" fame will come speak to the students on Thursday, March 5th.
**FUTURE FIELD TRIP--to Dominican University to see the production on "CLICK, CLACK, MOO!" We will go on Thursday, March 6th from 10-12 pm. More info soon.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey did an activity with the students on the art of conversation and how we talk to each other. Do we really listen to each other??!!
**In Mr. Packer Problem solving this week, Mr. Packer finished a story on "The MOST in the World" which the students will use as a springboard for a project next week.
**Keep saving those GIANT BOXES (the ones you can climb in) as well as other cool things for our space station design and construction in APRIL during our Space Theme. I cannot store anything now. You can start sending it in after spring break.
This week:
It was all about WATER climbing---WHAT!!?? Check out the science section. They are having so much fun sketching and recording thoughts and insights into their science notebooks. The students had a great time with Josie's Grandpa helping out on Station Day. Station Day activities included creating "climbing water" snowflakes, snow shovel math (reviewing teen numbers,) color by code ending sound activity, count, record, graph winter clothing and an end of the subitize challenge.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 5 Animals in our Treasures Reading series. They accessed background knowledge by discussing animals they know as pets and animals they might know about from other sources like zoo, t.v. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Momma Cat has Three Kittens." They made predictions about story content. The students discussed the actions preformed the kittens. Students took turns retelling the story in their own words. We took a look at sentence structure--subject/action---describing words. We did a group Story Elements Butterfly. The students are doing a great job of volunteering to write the answers about characters, setting, main events and main idea. Those students that had pets, shared information about actions their pets performed and compared them to the kittens in the story. Our sight words for this week are is and in. We added them to our current list. Our target sounds is short Oo and long Oo. They continued their study of action words (verbs) by creating a list of action words that a kitten might do. Our Robust vocabulary included ACTION, GENTLE, COMPARE, CONTENT, POUNCE. The students discussed what an OPINION was. They elbow chatted their opinion about which pet they like most--cats or dogs and WHY they liked one or the other. The students worked on asking and answering questions using the folk tale, "Mama Mouse and El Gato." they also created a group Venn diagram model to record similarities and differences between mice and cats. They worked on verbally retelling key events in the folk tale using the format--fist--next--then--last. The students continue to work on segmenting and blending 3,4, and 5 phoneme words using the app Oz Phonics projected on screen. They also working on strengthening auditory skills and verbal responses by deleting, adding and substituting sounds to create new words using the words in the Haggerty Blue Book. Workstations this week included writing an opinion statement and explain why on a suggested topic, Lexia Core 5 work, small group animal sort--wild--pets--farm, leveled readers with check for fluency, story elements, asking and answering questions, sound sort, read it and add to it activity, short o find the word to match the picture and I Can...They Can compose and illustrate--human actions and animal actions. We are continuing our author/text study of Mo Willems stories and will use his stories format to work on opinion writing, text clues and speech bubbles to denote the speaker.
Math: The students continue to practice rote counting to 100 and beyond and grouping objects by tens to equal 100. The students reviewed the terms addends and sum. The students had great fun with the app Sam Phibian seeing how quickly they could gather the necessary numbers amounts to "feed" Sam. Great visual motor and counting practice! They continue to work on the concepts GREATER THAN/LESS THAN. Math workstations included using ten frames to illustrate teen numbers, sorting by common attributes, number bonds to 10, listening to a thinking story and deciding if you add or take away, recognizing even and odd numbers and recognizing geometric solids.
Writing: Students begun work on formal lowercase letter formation. The letters c, o, v and s were worked on using their mini boards and chalk. They applied what they learned in their orange practice books. We began a process called sentence lifting, where I take a sentence from someone's journal and project it so the all students can examine it. How does the sentence look? Can you read it? How does it sound? Does it make sense? Does it have spaces between each word? Does it have an ending mark? Does it begin with an uppercase letter? Are the letters where they should be? So much to think about!! The students give their critique in a positive way and make suggestions. We are learning so much from each other!
Science: The students reviewed what they have discovered about water so far. This week in Experiment 3, the students experimented with paper towels, paper, sponges, wax paper and kleenex in wiping up water. They discussed at their tables which was best to remove the water. Lots of conversation and OPINIONS about which one did the best job. Most tables agreed that sponges and paper towels did the best job at "sucking up" (their words) the water. But how and why?? As the students used their magnifying glasses to take a closer look, some noticed holes or spaces in the sponge and paper towel. MMMMMmm..... The students then suspended a piece of paper towel onto a dowel rod in a cup. I poured some red water into the cup. What happened?? "It looks like the water is climbing up the paper towel." Discovery.....The water climbs into the holes or spaces....a sponge has large holes. You can also see the holes/spaces in the paper towel. The conversation shifted to other things that water climbs up fast into. The paper didn't really suck up the water. The kleenex got all mushy. We put a piece of celery into the water at the end of the day. Students made their predictions. The next day......students took their magnifying glasses. What did they observe? Some of the leaves of the celery looked red. The top of the celery had red inside. Jeremy spoke about the root system. Are their spaces inside the celery? All these connections!!! Very cool!! The students recorded their findings in science journal and made sketches and wrote about their thoughts and reflections. Next week--sink/float and what is a bubble?
Technology: In reading small group, the apps Lexia Core 5, iTalk, Rocket Speller and Magic Reading 3 were used to enhance segmenting and blending, word practice, fluency, and sound foundation. In math small groups, the apps Sam Phibian, Number Find, Butterfly Math were used to enhance visual motor, counting quantities, place value, addition and subtraction and number order.
Literature: "Have You Filled Your Bucket Today," "The Reasons for Seasons," "Curious George's Snowy Day," "My Friend is Sad," and other Elephant and Piggy stories by Mo Willems.
No comments:
Post a Comment